Other Resources

An Annotated Bibliography of NonsenseResource Type: ArticlePublished: 1998Academic critics today not only question the impact of science upon society, but they also question the very idea of scientific rationality.

DFO Library Closures Anger Scientific CommunityResource Type: ArticlePublished: 2014When word first broke that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was closing seven of their libraries, government officials promised that there would be no loss of vital historical material. Today many are skeptical of those claims.

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of ScienceResource Type: BookPublished: 1998The authors criticize postmodernism in academia for its misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics: (1) The incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; (2) the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others". The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism," and in particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing." The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.Published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles and in the United Kingdom as Intellectual Impostures.

GMO Propaganda and the Sociology of ScienceResource Type: ArticlePublished: 2015In August of 2014, the website Gawker revealed documents that demonstrated the lengths to which the global chemical giant Monsanto would go in order to control the narrative about their products  in particular, their genetically modified crops. While we all like to believe that our scientific/rational brains see through the transparent marketing, public relations rhetoric exists because it greatly sedates critical thought.

How Does the Subaltern Speak?Resource Type: ArticlePublished: 2013Vivek Chibber argues that postcolonial theory discounts the enduring value of Enlightenment universalism at its own peril. Focusing particularly on the strain of postcolonial theory known as subaltern studies, Chibber makes a strong case for why we can -- and must -- conceptualize the non-Western world through the same analytical lens that we use to understand developments in the West. He offers a sustained defense of theoretical approaches that emphasize universal categories like capitalism and class. His work constitutes an argument for the continued relevance of Marxism in the face of some of its most trenchant critics.

Nature, science & powerQuestions need to be asked...Resource Type: WebsiteHere many questions will be asked, some answers attempted. This blog connects to a new book: Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, published in 2014 by Between the Lines.

Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 23, 2016Science and its enemiesResource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)Published: 2016Our society and its institutions, public and private, regularly tell us that science, and education in the sciences, are crucial to our future. These public declarations are strangely reminiscent of the equally sincere lip service they pay to the ideals of democracy. And, in the same way that governments and private corporations devote considerable efforts to undermining the reality of democracy, so too they are frequently found trying to block and subvert science when the evidence it produces runs counter to their interests. Real live scientists doing real live science, it seems, are not nearly as loveable as Science in the abstract.

Rationality/ScienceResource Type: ArticlePublished: 1995Chomsky writes: "It strikes me as remarkable that the left today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use."

Science and liberationScience as human curiosity, as authority, and as business Resource Type: ArticlePublished: 2014The conservative movements attack on science has several prongs. Where they can attain government office, as in Canada, they use the highly effective tools of funding and de-funding, and regulation and de-regulation, to control government scientists and embolden private interests. The goal is to transfer power and resources from public services and public science to private institutions, while often appealing to moral and religious doctrines in the process.

Scientists Protest Canada's War on ScienceResource Type: ArticlePublished: 2014The Harper government is closing libraries, trashing documents and firing thousands of scientists  while handing out billions in subsidies to oil companies.

Silence of the LabsResource Type: Film/VideoPublished: 2014Scientists across the country are expressing growing alarm that federal cutbacks to research programs monitoring areas that range from climate change and ocean habitats to public health will deprive Canadians of crucial information.

The War on ScienceMuzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper's CanadaResource Type: BookPublished: 2013Do No Science, Hear No Science, Speak No Science -- that is the Harper agenda. And if this agenda is most evident and most pronounced in environmental science, that's simply because it is the field most likely to uncover evidence that the government's paramount goal -- to free the country's resource extraction industries from oversight in the name of rapid expansion -- is wrongheaded, reckless, and damaging.

What is Stephen Harper doing to Canada? How can we stop him?Resource Type: ArticlePublished: 2015The Harper regime has had a toxic effect on Canada. The wealthy are better off, but most Canadians are worse off, and rights and freedoms, democracy, access to information, and science have suffered. How can we stop him? Here is a factsheet which can be downloaded, printed, and distributed as a two-sided flyer.